Thursday, February 28, 2008 5:19 AM
by
jtspencer
sneaky parent
I read the following on ABC's website after seeing a short video clip on yahoo.
Diana Mijares, a Houston mom, got suspicious when her normally mild-mannered 4-year-old, Megan, was suspended four times from preschool for bad behavior. So she did what any normal parent would do, and she bugged her daughter’s backpack. What she heard didn’t go over so well:
Megan Mijares’ digital tape recorded mostly mundane moments at Memorial Elementary School’s prekindergarten class, but then it captured the teacher yelling at the group of 4- and 5-year-olds. All of it happened without Megan’s or her teacher’s knowledge.
“You’re just a bad kid,” the teacher says on the six-hour tape. “You’re mean to me, so I get to be mean to you.”
The teacher, who was not identified, continues to harshly scold the children.
“You are all just stupid kids. I swear to God,” the teacher says. “You are just all stupid kids.”
Mijares said at that point the teacher was responding to a boy who was moving slowly.
I realize that this teacher should never talk to students this way. I understand that this teacher probably should have been fired years ago. I doubt that I have ever called the students "stupid," especially in a school where the term is so loaded (In Spanish, estupido is a really bad insult).
My concern is this: I don't believe a parent should be taping a teacher. I hate the idea of hidden cameras, because I value privacy. What if a kid had audio-taped me talking to a student as she explained that she had been facing horrible abuse at home? What if I had used a non-cuss word that parents sometimes get angry about (like "What the Hell" or "Holy Crap.") What if we were doing a role-play in history where I was the factory owner?
What concerns me even more is the complete lack of professionalism and the current view of teachers. Can you imagine sneaking a hidden audio tape into the offices of parents? Imagine, then, playing that back to kids as mommy talks about how nice an ass the UPS guy and daddy drops F-bombs in talking about Fantasy Football. It's more than this isolated incident. A recent Time Magazine cover read, "How to Make Great Teachers," as we were clay to mould by the experts. High stakes testing and scripted curriculum forces us into nothing more than educational practioners and programmable robots. We are rarely given a voice in the debates about curriculum and instruction.
I'm even more concerned about the current role of parents. When I was a student, my parents did not play the role of defense lawyer. If I acted out, they apologized and asked what they could do at home to reinforce behaviors at school. They never would have taught me to be sneaky and manipulative by audio-taping a teacher.